


mister moon

by qrizzly



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Universe, Astral Projection, Dreams, Fantasy elements, Life at Sea, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Sea Monsters, nerv is a maritime hunting organization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19437139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qrizzly/pseuds/qrizzly
Summary: Shinji doesn't know anything about angels on the moon that can run on water and set things on fire and reach people through dreams. He doesn't know how he'll find feathers scattered by the wind and stolen by people in shrimping boats. Shinji just knows that he wants to learn more about Kaworu. He wants to help him home.





	1. introduction

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the song ["mister moon" by kate micucci ❤](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rccxm8OaNeI)

Misato was working when Shinji left again. 

A home is a place of comfort, a shield from all horrors and pain. The lighthouse he'd been staying in for the past year was the closest and yet the farthest thing Shinji had ever had from a home. If the world was one of pain, Nerv was the heart of it, and if Nerv was the heart of it then Misato's lighthouse was an atrium, safe and kind until the blood came pouring in.

The loudness of the people Shinji lived with varied from bothersome at best to insufferable at worst. 

Back when she and Shinji were on their own, Misato was okay enough to deal with; her drunken rambling at night and aversion to chores had just become a part of staying there, rather than some inconveniences Shinji had to lose sleep over. She was sisterly and teasing and sometimes it frayed Shinji at the edges. But even though Misato never quite understood him, it was obvious that she was trying.

Spending weeks at a time on the cold and salt-spraying sea was gut-starving and arduous -- easy work for an isolation-toughened girl like Asuka Langley Soryu. But with her left arm broken and her right wrist sprained, she couldn't tie sailor's knots or hurl harpoons into maritime monsters, and so her thirst for battle festered within her until, finally, it ate her up. 

It had been getting more and more difficult to handle Asuka's tendency to lash out, whether it was at Shinji, Misato, herself, or just the echoing, circular walls of the lighthouse. Even when Shinji hid away on the huge, spiraling staircase below their dorm, Asuka's words were loud enough to shoot through the downwards tunnel of the corridor and into the dark recesses of Shinji's mind.

Sometimes quietude was all Shinji craved, but once it actually came to him, the emptiness of the lighthouse became unbearable. Asuka's presence was domineering and sharp. Misato's became strange and uneasing. But emptiness was even more suffocating.

Once Shinji reached the bottom of the staircase, his listless stumble became a brisk walk. The steepness of the grassy, sloping hill he had to tread down sped his pace up to a run. Once he reached the sand of the beach, he was sprinting, and God only knew where he was going because he hung his head down as he ran. Wind tossed his hair and slipped under his shirt and knocked against his eardrums.

He yelped as his foot hit a coastal rock and the momentum dragged him headfirst into the dirt. Mud cushioned his fall, but filled his grimacing mouth. A harsh breeze washed over him, and soon enough the cold tide followed suit. 

Shinji lied deadly still, entertaining some far-off hope that acting like a corpse would turn him into one.

He was utterly pathetic.

* * *

Kaworu fell, too. And when he landed, he struggled to get back up.

He knew the journey to Earth would be more difficult without a chariot, but he tended to leap with a grand jeté into his decisions and didn't think much about how different the trek would be. He just knew that it was faster, and more painful, and that the snap of body to ground was a difficult one. Most of all, however, Kaworu knew that he could handle it.

But God, oh _God_ was it fast, and was it painful. Kaworu didn't expect fire to envelop him and he never expected the feeling of wearing away, like countless holes being burnt into every inch of his skin. He was glowing white hot as he descended. The only direction he knew was the one in which he was being violently pulled. Even despite the feeling of his skin tearing and mind tumbling, there was no sound to be heard in the empty atmosphere. His limbs were useless. The only part of him he could control were his eyelids: he could either close them and amplify the feeling of being scorched alive, or he could keep them open and watch himself dissolve.

From his position, falling back-first with his head forced to bow inward, he could see through the blur of dizziness that flickering pieces of him were peeling out from his form like sparks flying downward -- upward? -- away from him, lost to the emptiness of space. His limbs retained a comprehensible shape but were a trembling shimmer at the edges. His fingers flickered and wavered like candle flames.

His wings took the brunt of the force and he could feel it. They hung uselessly in the sides of his vision and flailed erratically in the wind like tangled kites. It was with abject horror, the likes of which Kaworu had never felt before, that he realized his feathers were being plucked away by the velocity. It wasn't long before there would be nothing left of them.

The fall felt as if it lasted forever. The only sign of time passing was the size of the shadowed moon in his vision. It was large when he first leaped, almost taking up the whole of his sight. Then it only took up half. Then, a quarter.

Kaworu's tears fell in the moon's direction as he watched it become a small, water-blurred sliver in the sky. Just yesterday he was attempting to speak with his stony father and being gently teased by his siblings. Now his home was impossibly far away.

But was it ever really his home to begin with?

Slowly, the empty air around him began to weigh something, and Kaworu shut his eyes, waiting for a new world to collide with him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something's falling.

Shinji decides that he relies on the ocean too much. On unreal days and numb nights, he dreams a lot about giving himself to the sea, letting the waves carry him, letting the weight of the water pull him down. He dreams a lot about the last of his evidence on land rising back to the top of the water when he lets out his final breath. He doesn't dream about the burn of drowning as much as he envisions lying on the soft sand at the bottom, and looking up.

Stars are lucky. If Shinji were to lie at the very bottom of the ocean, the sun would be a mere myth; even if there were no rocks or animals or plants in its path the sheer density of the ocean would reduce the bright mass of the sun to a mere shadow. Stars are able to shine down on Earth from utterly incomprehensible distances. Outer space holds nothing to get in the way of their light.

Shinji relies on the ocean and admires the stars as he lies stagnant in the abandoned rowboat he'd hefted from the shore sand. Lying beneath the seats feels strangely secure with the wooden boat walls encasing him. At first there was an underlying panic to tucking himself in the tight space and only having the sky to watch as the ocean dragged him somewhere, anywhere, else; but Shinji found it gradually more easy to give himself to the will of the universe. Despite being an undoubtedly wider force, it's an easier weight to carry than the will of his father, or the will of Misato, or the will of the whole world...

Shinji is lifted from a heavy unconsciousness when he hears whistling.

It's sharp. It cuts with force and precision through the air. It's so loud.

The boat sways haphazardly on the water as Shinji scrambles to sit up, his body far ahead of his mind in shaking off the blanket of sleep, and his eyes struggle to focus as they search for the cause of that awful screaming. In the end, it's easy. He fixes his view upwards and ahead.

Something's falling.

It's glowing bright and it sears shadows into Shinji's retinas as he stares. The long teardrop shape shrieks through the sky and sinks rapidly towards the ocean perhaps only half a kilometer from his place on the sea. 

For a few seconds, Shinji's hands flail around uselessly as they struggle to decide whether they should plug his ears, cover his eyes, hold the top of his head in a duck for cover, or grab the oars. 

It takes a humiliating amount of time but eventually Shinji's logic catches up with the present and he decides on the last option; the oars land with a weighty splash back into the sea and Shinji is rowing backwards from the falling star with all the might his aching arms will allow. He's sobbing and huffing whines out into the cold air like a frightened puppy, and he gets more and more certain with every lowered semitone and new volume of the whistling that there's no way he's escaping the impact of this star.

Frantically, he glances one more time up at the falling light. He sees a figure, a tiny, bowed shadow, within it. Shinji's heart stops.

That's not a star.

That's a _person_.

The ocean lets out a deafening roar when the person lands and leaves a tower of sea spray climbing upwards in their wake, but Shinji doesn't so much as flinch until the impact ripples outwards in great blue sea walls. He can do nothing but hold on to the rowboat's edges and brace for the cold, cold water that pours down on him like needles before the force of the waves reaches him and nearly overturns his boat. The impact rattles his bones and the waves push him back and back and back and Shinji can only hold on and hold his breath and grit his teeth and squeeze his eyes shut as he rides out the ringing in his ears and the relentless, aggressive push of the water.

Gradually, slowly, the ocean begins to level out again. But Shinji's boat still rocks dangerously and he can still hear nothing except ringing and the pounding of his heart. He doesn't trust the easing of the sea nor the fade of the ocean's roar into nothingness.

At some indiscernible point, he started breathing again, in broken, ragged pants through his teeth, but still Shinji refuses the open his eyes or release his grip on the boat's rough wood. 

The ringing subsides, leaving instead the white noise of a calm sea. Yet still Shinji sits, bracing for absolutely nothing.

_Not a star. A_ person.

Shinji snaps his head upwards with a shaky inhale. His eyes focus and he quickly realizes he can still see them; the person is _floating_ , they're _glowing_ on the surface of the water and Shinji's palms are raw from holding onto scratchy, rough wood but he takes hold of the oars once more and rows forward with a new vigor, one fueled by a horror for the fallen stranger so great that it overpowers his horror _at_ the fallen stranger.

The journey feels tantalizingly slow despite the weight Shinji puts into the drags of his oars through the ocean. Even so, it isn't until he's finally closing the gap between them that he gives himself the freedom to observe the person openly. 

It's a kid, he realizes with a cold inhalation, a kid around his own age and around his own size. Shinji looks frantically across the horizon for any signs of sunken planes, wrecked remains of a rocket ship, anything -- but instead he only sees an apathetic, black horizon. What was a _kid_ doing in the _sky_?

It takes Shinji great patience to position his boat mostly-parallel to the kid, rather than just scrambling to the front of the boat and arching his body over the bow to look down at him like a child at a petting zoo, but he manages it. Instead, once he's situated he forsakes the boat's stability to frantically peer at him over the gunwale, like a calm and rational human being. But the longer Shinji stares, the more his panic seems to diminish.

The boy in the water looks oddly at ease. He lies on the surface with his belly towards the stars and face turned away from Shinji. He's pale. All of him is pale and glowing -- even his clothes, which remain nonsensically intact, and which are well-kempt, modest, and neat. His shirt is held together with silver buttons, and intricate, velvety designs of wings and clouds and stars climb down his sleeves. From head to toe, the boy has a princely air to him.

Shinji is a mere creature driven by an enigmatic forced called instinct. So, without knowing why, he reaches with shaking hands down to the boy, taking ridiculous care to stretch his legs out behind him to keep from falling headfirst into the cold water. 

He grabs an arm by the bicep. For a split second, it's _searing_ hot to the touch, and Shinji nearly drops him with a flinch; but just as quickly as the heat arrives, it dissipates into a calm coolness. Strange though the sensation is, the boy is solid and has mass, which is enough of a surprise unto itself.

Shinji marvels at how easy it is to lift up the kid by the waist. For having just been violently plunged into the ocean, he's strangely dry in the arms of Shinji, who notices with a strong breeze of relief that the stranger is breathing under his fingers. But, solid though he feels, the boy is otherwise utterly weightless.

Shinji has to shut his eyes for a moment to weather a sudden storm of uncertainty and panic, but he shakes himself out of it. 

"This is a dream," he mutters aloud. He doesn't believe himself, so he says it again. "This is a dream."

Shinji's movements jostle the boat more than the glowing boy's body does. When it splays limp like a doll over the pathetic, creaking wood, it just solidifies the fact that Shinji has absolutely no clue what's going on, or what he's doing.

He lets out a choppy breath and turns the boat around.

"This is a dream," Shinji whispers, despite completely giving up on believing it. "This is a dream."

He rows.

The boy's face is the face of someone sleeping who was falling out of the sky only a few hours prior. It's relaxed, but not quite peaceful. There's a slight, leftover tensity to his features -- fragments of fear, maybe even sadness. The negativity looks somehow wrong on the stranger's face, which is pointed and angled in all the directions that would perfectly frame a smile. But in his sorry state, the boy's face is joyless.

Shinji looks down at it with a furrowed brow as he shuffles his feet across the soft shoreline sand.

_Wake up_ , Shinji thinks to the boy. He doesn't know what will happen if he does actually wake up, so he doesn't dare try to tell this to the stranger out loud or, god forbid, shake him awake. But Shinji does attempt to harness any latent psychic abilities he might have to try to will the glowing boy conscious. Having him asleep is troublesome for a few reasons.

Reason one: light though he is, it feels wrong to carry a stranger who has fallen out of the sky as a groom might carry his bride. It's awkward and overly familiar, and makes Shinji feel like some sort of hero. The title fits him like a large sweatshirt would fit a two-month-old baby.

Reason two: when Shinji finds that tiny cove crawlspace he tends to escape to, setting him down is an uncomfortable task. The pocket is tiny -- just barely big enough for two, maybe three people. Shinji carefully nudges a crab away with his shoe before setting the glowing (dimming?) boy down onto the sand. But then he takes up too much space. The night is windy and cold, so Shinji maneuvers the pale boy to sit upright against one corner of the cove while Shinji settles in the other. It's uncomfortable, but at least it's a little warmer.

The heaviness of Shinji's eyelids disagrees with his anxious heart and rambling brain. He has no idea what he just did or why he did it. Was it the right thing to do? Was it safe? When the boy wakes up, will he be kind? Will he be cruel? What even _is_ he?

Shinji has an idea, but he doesn't like it.

At Nerv Headquarters, Shinji read about the Second Comet. It arrived fifteen years ago. It came from the sky -- the moon, some say -- and crashed as it came down, bathing the world in space dust. It glowed and gave people strange visions, and the animals that came into contact with it became pale and big and gnarled with feathers and extra eyes. Most beasts died after having been exposed to it for a few hours at most, but others remained, mutated and glowing and fearsome.

Shinji squints at the sleeping boy with suspicion as he untangles the earphones wrapped around his walkman. Was he sent by he moon, like those comets? If the moon can send comets down to Earth, can it send people too?

He's having trouble keeping his eyes open and focused so he huffs and gives up entirely, tucking his knees in and shoving his face into his crossed arms. He lets the energetic strings and voices and wind instruments from his earphones wash over the noise in his head and carry him like stormy waves...

Then the left half of it leaves.

Shinji's head is heavy. His aching neck complains when set with the task of holding it up but the spike of anxiety in his chest demands it to be so. He blinks away the sleep blurring his vision to stare, wide-eyed, at the boy next to him.

He is very much awake.

Something strange turns in Shinji's stomach at the sight of this new expression the stranger has on his face: something pleasant and spilling over with serenity, eyes closed to enjoy the music playing through the stolen earphone he has pressed inside his ear. Now that he's conscious he sits with a relaxed posture, one hand resting on his bent knee with his other leg splayed out over the sand. Shinji is frozen as he watches his head sway slightly to the rhythm of the orchestra.

Then he speaks through his gentle smile. "What a wonderful song."

Shinji blinks.

The thing that seems to get his body out of its paralyzed state is the sudden realization that yes, this boy does in fact have eyes. When they open to look calmly at him, the _bright_ red against the rest of his paleness is shocking enough for Shinji to fill his lungs with a gasp and flounder around for a second or two, kicking up bunches of sand as he scrambles to press himself harder against the sharp, rocky wall behind him. 

The comet boy's smile crinkles his eyes at the corners, but his brows twist upward with sympathy. "My apologies," he says. His voice is nice. "I supposed there would be no way to get your attention without startling you. I was curious as to what you were listening to." He pulls out the earphone and sets it down neatly where the walkman lies, stuffed between them in the sand.

Shinji notices the absence of music and feels at his right ear, realizing the other earphone must have fallen out when he was seizing like an idiot.

His brain scrambles in a similarly stupid fashion as he tries to figure out how to respond, but his mouth is ten steps ahead. "It's... the song was... um..."

After a moment of silence, Comet Boy is merciful enough to finish his sentence. "Ode to Joy. You have excellent taste, Shinji Ikari."

The stranger's head is tilted slightly when he sends Shinji a smile _filled_ with... with... something. Gentleness? Warmth?

Shinji's brain continues to trip over itself as he takes in his strange expression, but this time his mouth is smart enough to recognize the more important thing. "How do you know my name?"

"Who doesn't know your name?"

The boy smiles as he leans back comfortably against the rough wall, seemingly pleased with this vague response -- but then he seems to notice something. His smile drops and Shinji suddenly feels cold in its absence. Comet Boy turns around to look at his own back like he feels a spider on it, but a quick, shaking breath leaves him when he instead notices nothing there. He raises an arm to feel at his shoulder blades, his grim expression straying further and further from the warm smile he'd been wearing just seconds ago.

Shinji hates it. "What's -- what's wrong?"

The boy looks up at Shinji and his blood red eyes bore straight into him.

"My wings... they're gone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, cool! i guess this fic is a thing now. please comment what you think so far!! whether it's incoherent screaming or constructive criticism, all of your thoughts are of value to me <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If I was pulled down, is it not reasonable to assume my feathers were pulled down with me?"

Gravity is strange on Earth. 

On the moon, it was easy to glide between crystalline fixtures and above the watchful, upturned faces of his family's subjects. Even without his wings, it was easy to hop weightlessly on his toes across shining marble floors. Down here on Earth, Kaworu is a mere peasant hunched in the sand, the air around and above him a commanding burden to bear. But despite the inherent discomfort that accompanies it, it's somehow liberating in ways that are impossible to describe.

Kaworu's legs ache as they hold him upright, trembling under his weight; it's only his grip on the sharp-rocked walls of the cove that keep them from giving way. With a small gasp, Shinji rises onto his knees and subconsciously lifts his hands into the air, silent and bewildered but prepared to help. 

A surge of fondness flows like molasses through Kaworu. How dutiful Shinji is, how willing he is to give himself up for any benign little thing that comes his way, only to be betrayed by a world that gives him nothing in return.

Kaworu will give him everything.

For now though, it seems he left him winded with his last remark, which is only natural; it was reckless of him to be so frank to someone who doesn't yet understand what he is. Kaworu does his best to soothe him.

"I'll be alright," he says, trying to keep the waver out of his tone. He feels so _heavy_. "I'm only gathering myself. Plummeting into the ocean at the speed of a military jet will do that to you."

To Kaworu's delight, Shinji actually laughs at that, though it's more of a shocked, half-smiling huff than anything. It gives him the determination to stay upright without support, unstable though his stance feels. He fills the small silence that follows:

"I've heard a lot about you. I'd thank you for happening upon me and helping me to shore, but in all honesty, it's no surprise to me that you'd do so. You've saved a lot of people, after all."

Shinji relaxes, sitting back down, but his expression falls slightly with disbelief. "I have?"

Kaworu forgets his own heaviness and leans down to offer Shinji a hand. "Of course. You really should be more aware of how important you are."

"I should?..."

Shinji takes his hand. It feels solid and warm in Kaworu's palm; the angel marvels at it, almost losing his balance as Shinji rises to his level.

Shinji's face is so vulnerable, so softly awed that it makes Kaworu place his left hand over the tanner one in his right. 

"Who are you?" asks the Third Child.

The angel answers with the name he'd chosen for himself years ago. "Kaworu. Kaworu Nagisa." It feels good, coming out of his mouth and into Earth's air. It feels like his true name.

He feels Shinji's grip tighten slightly. "...Thank you, Nagisa."

Kaworu's smile grows before he can realize it. "Please, just call me Kaworu, Ikari."

A shy little smile blooms on Shinji's reddening face and Kaworu likens it to a shooting star, small and quiet and lucky, something to catch in your hands and keep in your heart.

"Um... Just Shinji is okay for me too, then," he mutters. 

Kaworu grins.

Kaworu frowns as he watches Shinji frantically spin a stick between his hands. Despite the cold of the night, sweat is starting to shine on his brow, which is crumpling tighter and tighter with frustration. 

"C'mon...!"

Outside the cove, the wind picks up, and it slants a light drizzle that has begun to fall. Kaworu barely feels the cold at all. But when Shinji offered to make a fire, reaching behind him to uncover a bundle of sticks he'd gathered from the seaside canopy some days before, his nervous eagerness to help quickly disarmed any protest Kaworu might have somehow conjured up.

Watching that eagerness shrivel up and die only to be replaced by anxious irritation is troubling, to say the least. It isn't helped by the repetitive scratch of the stick against the hole Shinji had carefully carved into a second stick with the swiss army knife in his pocket. Sometimes it squeaks harshly, not unlike a chair against a hard floor, and while it doesn't bother Kaworu, Shinji grimaces whenever it happens.

"Ugh, God, I'm sorry," Shinji says, stopping his tired hands only to keep going with even more fervor. "This wasn't... I don't know why this isn't working! My friend Kensuke taught me how to do this, so I-I don't know why..." He trails off from a raised voice to a croak to a horribly pitiful silence, and Kaworu can't take it.

He puts his hands over Shinji's. They pause in their motion and flinch under Kaworu's touch, but they don't withdraw from it.

"Shinji," Kaworu murmurs gently. "Will you let me have a try?"

Shinji meets his gaze with soft surprise at first, but then he looks down, utterly, sourly defeated as he nods.

Kaworu feels bad when he takes apart Shinji's strategically put-together contraption, but he separates the two sticks, setting them gently in the pile with the rest of them. Then hovers his hands above them, closing his eyes, trying to focus.

He hasn't done something like this in quite a while.

Kaworu inhales, gathering all the energy he has -- all the dancing particles of light in his body, all the searing heat leftover from his impact, all the strength that keeps him sitting here, upright -- everything. He gathers it all, feels where everything is.

With an exhale, he focuses it into his hands.

Heat fades into them, slowly, but intensely, and Kaworu feels every place it left; he feels so much colder in those places, so humid beneath his clothes and so dizzy in his head. 

He doesn't understand. Was this always so difficult?

With newfound determination, Kaworu takes another breath, and as he lets it go, he pushes the heat outward and feels his hands bloom alight with fire. 

His eyes droop when he opens them, but he refuses the dizzy feeling and does his best to focus through it. He covers the firewood with his burning hands and waits, watching the fire spread to the wood. Within seconds, a crown of silvery flames has flourished atop the pile, warm and jubilantly dancing.

Kaworu smiles -- weak, but pleased -- and finally withdraws his hands.

All at once, Earth's heaviness gets to him again. The composure he'd collected in the few moments he'd spent awake falls from him like water between his fingers. Air rushes out of his mouth and his head lolls downward. 

This wasn't supposed to happen. After such a small favor... why does he feel so _tired_?

Kaworu catches a piece of his breath and shivers at the breeze crawling up his side from outside the cove. He presses a hot palm to his forehead and looks up at Shinji, thinking to half-jokingly mention that he now truly knows what he meant by the cold, but the angel quickly comes to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't lighten the weight of the air very much.

The Third has a wide-open, numbly-terrified look on his face, and he stares at Kaworu unblinking for so long a moment that the latter is worried he might have paralyzed him. But then, slowly, Shinji does blink, and his frozen stare thaws to move down to the fire between them. Kaworu's gaze follows, and it's still there, warm and glowing, a gentle white illuminating the dark cove.

When Kaworu's eyes flit back up to Shinji, he sees his dropped jaw shut again. His Adam's apple bobs with a swallow as his stare crawls back up to meet Kaworu's. Shinji inhales the pale smoke rising from the fire -- deeply, once, and then shallowly twice more, as if the scent is unusual -- before speaking.

"So," Shinji says, clearing his throat weakly when the word comes out cracked. "So, um... what -- what was it you were saying, before? About your... your wings?"

Suddenly, Kaworu remembers. He knew he'd have less power on Earth, but... is he even weaker because his feathers have been plucked away?

Feathers. Feathers...

With a gasp, the angel suddenly scrambles to stand up, but once he's on his feet his vision starts to spin and he stumbles back as the world turns under him, subjecting him once again to its merciless gravity. Fizz obstructs his vision but he feels footsteps approach him in the sand, then arms closing around his torso, keeping him from falling.

"Kaworu, sit down!" Shinji urges, worry shaking his voice. "You're -- you've just fallen, you're not well. You need rest."

Shinji smells like sweat and sea salt. His expression is close and comes into view when Kaworu stares at him through the dissipating fizz. It's nervous, eyes still wide with confusion and disbelief. Kaworu pities him.

"I'm okay, Shinji," he tells him, setting a hand on the other's back, trying to smile. He feels it fall away when he looks out towards the rainy shoreline. "But you have to understand. Just hours ago, I had wings. As I was falling down here, down to Earth, they fell apart, feather by feather." 

He looks back towards Shinji and holds his hesitant stare firmly. "Shinji, I think my wings may have been the primary derivation of my power. They're what made me an angel."

"An angel...?" Shinji whispers.

Kaworu straightens his posture and stands on his own, but keeps his hand on the small of Shinji's back. Shinji's hands falter around the angel's waist, but remain there, hovering thoughtlessly.

Kaworu nods. "My kind lives under the surface of the moon, hidden from the Lilin. But the Lilin are not hidden from us."

Shinji's brows slant upward with a fearful sort of confusion, but Kaworu has to keep going. He needs him to understand all of this, what he is and where he comes from. Kaworu has been watching the Third with every waxing of the full moon for a year now, but this is Shinji's first time returning his gaze. The knowledge between them is uneven, and Kaworu has to smooth it out.

"Much like yourself and the other Children, we have visions in our dreams. For those born from Adam, it's a way of connecting with others -- seeing the environment as it is through their eyes, or occasionally even talking directly with them. As a unit, the reach of the angels can span all the way from the moon to this planet, so long as its inhabitants breathe in the ashes we offer them." With great care, Kaworu takes Shinji's hands into his own, turning to him as he speaks. "Do you understand, Shinji?"

Shinji looks frightened and utterly lost. On the verge of running away. 

He shakes his head unabashedly. "No, Kaworu! I don't understand any of this -- what are you saying?"

Kaworu squeezes his hands -- a gesture which Shinji returns, perhaps subconsciously. "I chose a time like this to come here, Shinji. The moon is completely shadowed tonight. The less lunar light is shed on Earth, the lesser our ability to communicate with its dwellers."

The angel smiles ruefully as he stares down at their hands. "As of now, I am one of its dwellers. But... I'm not exactly supposed to be here, Shinji." 

Maybe Kaworu is saying the Third Child's name too much, but he needs it to stay calm. He loves its syllables and the way his teeth easily form into a grin as he says it. He loves it more than any word in any language.

Shinji's grip tightens for a moment. "What do you mean by that?"

There Kaworu goes again, being reckless with his words. He corrects himself. "What I mean is, without my wings, I cannot return to the moon." 

Reluctantly, he lets Shinji's fingers fall from his own, and once again turns to the entrance of the cove, straining his eyes to peer through the gloom and the precipitation. "But gravity is such a relentless force, especially here on Earth. If I was pulled down, is it not reasonable to assume my feathers were pulled down with me?"

Shinji falls silent at that. So does Kaworu.

After a moment, the angel wordlessly takes his first step forwards. It's difficult, raising his leg through this atmosphere, but he doesn't fall; he feels the sand cushion the landing and roots his foot there, strong and still. He takes his second step and rain lands on his face, wind runs its fingers through his hair.

Kaworu takes a trembling breath. He's never felt rain nor wind before.

He definitely knows what _cold_ means, now. It's a biting sensation, one that slows the molecules within you, raises bumps on your skin and makes your muscles jump in place, frantic for the constant, atomic movement which keeps the body working -- the movement that the cold is seeping into and stilling.

It's awful.

It's _invigorating_.

Kaworu looks up. A dark sky greets him; if he focuses, he can see even deeper shadows within it, the billows and folds of the clouds he fell through. He looks ahead. The waves of the ocean lurch and slosh in the wind, pushing like an army through the shore sand before retreating, and sea foam fizzes until the bubbles pop away and the cycle repeats. Kaworu looks around him, and cliffs surround the beach he stands upon, encapsulating the wide expanse in a gargantuan, circular frame, and upon those cliffs stand trees which sway gently by the branch, leaves fluttering silently as individuals and like white noise as crowds, the same white noise of the waves that charge inwards, over and over again.

Kaworu spins slowly in place as he watches everything move. Things aren't like this back home. Everything is so still there, but on Earth... everything is so _alive_.

He's smiling -- maniacally, maybe -- once he completes a full circle. He's facing Shinji again, hoping -- _knowing_ that he _must_ know how beautiful all of it is, how gorgeous Earth still manages to be after being so badly damaged so many times over billions of years, with so many forces determined to destroy it.

Through the dark, though, Shinji's face is unreadable at first. It seems calm. At least, calmer than before. But then Kaworu's vision adjusts enough to notice the subtleties. The slight parting of the lips, the way the eyes fall open just a little too wide. The focus of the pupils not at Kaworu, but at some place to his right.

Kaworu turns to look with him, to see what Shinji sees. 

He notices it immediately.

Tiny, white specks blink in the distance, falling from the sky in a path towards the ocean that veers sharply west in the breeze. The little lights number at least in the dozens, and could easily be mistaken for a fleet of aircrafts, or strange birds gliding on the brisk gale. 

But Kaworu recognizes the glow, how they flutter as they fall, and how little they must weigh to be carried so easily by the wind.

Kaworu steps forward again. He takes another step, then another. The rise and fall becomes easier; his feet carry forward in cycles that quicken more and more until he's running through the sand.

Of all the unfamiliar sensations he's experienced since falling to Earth, running is the most exciting to Kaworu. Like almost everything else has been, it's difficult. The heaviness he felt while walking doubles, but he uses the momentum and the drag of gravity to his advantage and trudges through it all; he trips and stumbles forward but catches himself with his other foot, and the push from it lurches him forward even farther. It all feels so clumsy, but it also feels so good to be rewarded in such a primal way, to gain more and more speed the harder he works himself.

He keeps running towards the charging shore until he feels the rushing wetness squelch under his shoes. He keeps running towards his fluttering, flying feathers until he's sprinting on the ever-shifting surface of the ocean, his steps sinking just a little until they're sailing through the air again, waiting to fall, then lift, then fall, then lift. It feels wonderful. It carries him so fast, so far...!

Kaworu smiles down at his feet. He supposes there's still that buoyant light dancing within his form after all.

Suddenly, he hears Shinji's voice from behind him, rising over the roar of the wind and the building downpour of the rain. "Kaworu! Kaworu, wait!"

Kaworu, without hesitation, does what he's told and skids his feet firmly against the water. The sea spray is carried away by the wind and once again Kaworu stands still, soaked, panting. With a remorseful ache in his chest, he looks back over his shoulder, towards Shinji. How could he forget _Shinji_?

He's tearing through the roughening ocean with his boat. His hair and clothes are drenched with rainwater. He looks miserable, but there's determination burning on his face that intensifies with each stroke of his oars.

Is it appropriate to grin at this? Kaworu doesn't know, but he does anyway. His body is cold but warmth spreads through him.

Of course Shinji would follow.

"Kaworu!" the Third shouts breathlessly over the wind and rain. "Those are your feathers out there, right? Let me help you get them back!"

A steep wave lifts Kaworu from behind, and he watches as it glides back out from under him to lift up Shinji's boat instead. The hulk of old wood is sluggish and hurls Shinji's posture off center, tilting drastically up the wave crawling under it before crashing back down onto the level surface. Shinji winces all the way through it but opens his eyes again once the boat lands, that dangerous tenacity still seething through his eyes.

Kaworu sees this and objects to it. He's watched it hurt him too many times. 

"Shinji, please go back," Kaworu calls over the storm. "You need rest too, don't you? Getting hurt again is the last thing you need."

Shinji is dragging himself closer, and so Kaworu is more receptive to the raw, torn-up frustration that carries in his yell through the damp air. "I don't care, I want to help you! Your feathers are going to fly away if we don't hurry!"

Torn, Kaworu peers past him. The shore Shinji carried him to suddenly seems so far away, so small behind the swelling raindrops and rising waves. Space and time are crushing them both into a corner.

With a shivering sigh, Kaworu succumbs.

_How could I ever refuse you?_

He nods before calling out, "I'll count on you, then. Please be careful, Shinji." 

Then he turns and starts running again.

He's sinking deeper, now. The freezing water rushes up to Kaworu's knees with each step before he's propelled forward, so now he's not running atop the sea so much as he is bounding clumsily through it. 

No matter how much Kaworu moves, the cold is getting worse. He thinks a few times that the harsh breeze is easing to a stop, but it just rushes against him in gusts again. Water weighs him down by his clothes and droplets trail in swift, single-file lines of bitter ice through his hair.

The angel has to squint as he looks up. Through the numb pain in his legs and the water in his eyes, he smiles.

_There you are._

The feathers fall like confetti. They're quick in the wind, veering and meandering through it like scared insects, but with leaps and swipes through the heavy night air Kaworu feels them catch against his palms. 

Holding his gathered feathers against his chest with his left hand, he reaches upwards with his right. He catches one or two of them sometimes and sees them barely escape his reach other times. He splashes when he comes back down, and when he does he sinks into the sea up to his hips. Then, his stomach. Then, his chest.

Kaworu is so cold. He clutches to his chest only a few handfuls of the plumage he'd so carelessly lost, and as he looks up against the rain dripping unpleasantly against his face, he sees the remaining scraps of his angelhood sail swiftly above him on the wind, glowing and soft and out of reach.

Kaworu is sinking. The weightlessness of his body in the ocean is, if anything but flesh-piercingly cold, comforting in its familiarity. But staying afloat takes a strength in the limbs that Kaworu no longer has, and he feels his body disobediently yielding to the sleep that wants to soak into him.

The water has reached his neck. With the last of his stamina, he hurls his numb limbs through the cumbersome ocean to turn to where Shinji must be. He'd lost track of him so he's too far away for comfort: a small figure behind mountainous waves, leaning perilously over the edges of his boat, collecting the glowing feathers that float to him on the restless sea.

"Shinji!" Kaworu calls. He bobs as the air leaves his lungs, and salty water fills his mouth. Coughing it out of his throat, he strains to stretch his neck above the surface. He calls again: "Shinji!"

The pile of feathers in his boat illuminates him, but only enough to spot him through the night. The tiny shadow of him bolts upright, frantically searching the ocean before his obscured gaze finally falls on Kaworu. He shouts something. Kaworu can't discern it, but he knows it's full of fear, full of panic. Maybe it's his name.

He knows Shinji won't see it, but Kaworu tries to shine a grin his way anyway, tries to channel calmness and reassurance and comfort -- tries to illuminate a path for him, like the beam of a lighthouse.

"Don't worry, Shinji! We will surely meet again!"

This time, he's sure he hears Shinji scream his name beneath the storm. Sorrow twinges Kaworu's smile, seizing him like the cold. 

He lets out his breath, and sinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tweaking this chapter enough for me to be satisfied was difficult but i don't wanna read through it anymore lol. 
> 
> let me know what you think! feedback really keeps me going and i'm always looking for ways to improve my work!!! <33


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